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Are the least successful traders those most likely to exit the market? A survival analysis contribution to the efficient market debate

https://doi.org/10.1016/j.ejor.2021.08.050Get rights and content

Highlights

  • Global financial crisis focused attention irrational behaviour of traders.

  • Survival of irrational traders and their behaviour influences post-crisis recovery.

  • Survival analysis reveals trader's sharpe ratio in relation to cease to trade.

  • Results explain the failure of forces underpinning adaptive market efficiency.

Abstract

Concerns regarding the assumptions of the Efficient Market Hypothesis have led to a greater emphasis on how the behaviour of different groups of traders might impact the evolution of financial markets; ideas encapsulated in the Adaptive Markets Hypothesis (AMH). A key assumption of the AMH is that the dynamics of competition and natural selection will drive ‘noise traders’, those least likely to push prices to efficient levels because they follow sub-optimal trading strategies, to exit the market. To test the key assumptions of the AMH, survival analysis is employed to examine the behaviour of retail spread-traders, a group who are widely reported to include many noise traders. Analysis of the trades executed by 5,164 individuals in the period 24th March 2006 to 7th February 2012 found that the least profitable and those who adopted ill-disciplined trading strategies tended to cease trading sooner than others. These findings are consistent with the AMH. However, profitable traders were also found to be more likely to cease trading than the average trader and a V-shaped relationship was found between a trader's Sharpe ratio and their likelihood of ceasing to trade (cf. the average trader). Furthermore, during the financial crisis of 2008–09, the disposition effect of traders and the proportion of noise traders increased and throughout the period of the study, the ill-discipline of new generations of traders increased. The results suggest that the forces underpinning the AMH are complex and the move towards market efficiency may not be as straightforward as some expect.

Introduction

False assumptions regarding the efficiency with which financial markets process information can lead to the misallocation of resources. A prevailing view for half a century was that prices fully discount all available information; reflected in the efficient markets hypothesis (EMH) (Fama, 1970). However, Grossman and Stiglitz (1980) challenged the existence of perfectly efficient markets, ones in which information is instantly discounted in market prices. They argued that those who buy and sell financial instruments (traders) only have an incentive to acquire costly information if profit opportunities exist.  This led some to argue that the efficiency of markets may change over time (Campbell, Lo & MacKinley, 1997). More recent empirical studies confirm that the assumptions of the EMH may not hold. For example, market returns do not simply follow random walks (e.g., Doyle & Chen, 2013; Shiller, 2000) and a linear dependency between past and future prices can occur (Urquhart & Hudson, 2013). Furthermore, statistical analysis has shown that the assumptions underpinning widely used models of financial behaviour, based on the EMH, are questionable (e.g., Akerlof & Shiller, 2009; Gan, Wang Chun & Johnstone, 2017).

Psychologists and behavioural economists have also argued that the human rationality assumptions underlying the EMH do not match individual behaviour and that information overload may result in traders making poor decisions (e.g., Frino, Grant & Johnstone, 2008; Goodwin, Önkal & Thomson, 2010). This led to a shift to studying financial markets in terms of the behaviour of traders, leading to Lo (2004; 2005) arguing that markets should be viewed as a continuously evolving process; ideas encapsulated in a revised version of the EMH, the Adaptive Markets Hypothesis (AMH). Proponents of the AMH postulate that traders act in their own interests but make mistakes. As they seek to adapt, an evolutionary process based on the dynamics of competition and natural selection occurs. This results in changes in market efficiency as the populations of traders with different characteristics evolve (Urquhart & McGroarty, 2014). In particular, market forces drive those who are least likely to push prices to efficient levels under the prevailing conditions to exit the market.

The AMH suggests that “survival is ultimately the only objective that matters for all financial traders” (Lo, 2004, p25).  However, most literature exploring the relationship between traders’ behaviour and survival has focused on theoretical supposition and analysis. For example, Hirshleifer (2001) postulated how judgement and decision biases incorporated in Prospect Theory (Kahneman & Tversky, 1979) may affect investors’ behaviour and asset pricing. Beyond this theoretical analysis, support for the AMH is largely based either on narrative descriptions or on market-level empirical work. Lo's (2004) work is a good example of a narrative account. He provides a description of and rationale for the AMH but offers no supporting empirical evidence. Research providing empirical support for the AMH is exclusively based on market price analysis (e.g., Ghazani & Araghi, 2014; Urquhart & McGroarty, 2014; Zhou & Lee, 2013). Despite this growing evidence in favour of the AMH, the EMH is still a widely accepted theory in the finance literature and Paul Volcker, the former Federal Reserve Chairman, claimed that "amongst the causes of the 2008–09 financial crisis was an unjustified faith in rational expectations [and] market efficiencies" (Volcker, 2011, p. 1).

This highlights the need for further research to deepen our understanding of the relative merits of AMH vs. EMH. A vital missing element is the empirical analysis of the individual trader's behaviour and how this impacts their probability of continuing to trade. This is important because a key assumption of the AMH is that market forces lead to changes in the relative proportions of ‘noise traders’, those whose decisions are based on incorrect analysis or perceptions, and traders who behave more in line with rational expectations (i.e., individuals who make decisions based on their human rationality, the information available to them, and their past experiences), referred to as ‘more informed’ traders.  However, no previous studies examining the AMH (e.g., Hirshleifer, 2001; Lo, 2004; Urquhart & McGroarty, 2014) have conducted empirical analysis to explore to what extent a trader's decision to cease trading is related to the degree to which they act in accordance with rational expectations. We fill this research gap by using operational research (OR) modelling techniques, particularly survival analysis (e.g., Cox, 1972), to analyse the trades of a large data set of individuals.

The strength of OR methods for this task is that they offer the prospect of estimating mathematical models to quantify the effect of different factors on an individual's probability of ceasing to trade. This approach has been successfully employed to develop insights regarding other aspects of financial markets (e.g., Bellini & Figà-Talamanca, 2005; Doyle & Chen, 2013; Krauss, Do & Huck, 2017; Lessmann, Sung, Johnson & Ma, 2012; Moreno & Olmeda, 2007; Sermpinis, Theofilatos, Karathanasopoulos, Georgopoulos & Dunis, 2013; Tabak & Lima, 2009).

Survival analysis is the most appropriate OR method to help answer the key research question addressed here:  Are noise traders (cf. more informed traders) those most likely to cease trading?’  It is widely accepted that noise traders are those most likely to display ill-disciplined, sub-optimal trading strategies and to lose money. Consequently, a methodology is employed that facilitates exploration of whether those most likely to cease trading are (i) the least profitable, and (ii) those who employ sub-optimal, ill-disciplined trading strategies.

Data related to trading in the two most popular instruments (FTSE 100 and DAX 30 futures) were provided by a large UK spread trading brokerage. These data were employed to examine the trading history of 5164 of their clients through the years 2006 to 2012. The robustness of the results was confirmed when testing the conclusions using two supplementary data sets from different spread trading brokerages based in the UK and South Africa.

To the best of our knowledge, this is the first empirical analysis of individual trader behaviour designed to test the predictions of the AMH and the first time that survival analysis has been used to study market evolution processes. Empirical evidence is presented that supports the view that changing market conditions have an impact on the mix of traders remaining in the market. In accordance with the AMH, the least profitable and the most ill-disciplined traders are found to be those more likely to cease trading than the average trader. However, the most profitable traders are also found to be more likely to cease trading than the average trader. In addition, throughout the period of the study, the ill-discipline of new generations of traders increased and during the financial crisis of 2008–09 the disposition effect of traders (the tendency to close winning positions more readily than losing positions) and the proportion of noise traders increased. We discuss how these complex new dimensions might require an adaption of the AMH.

The results are based on a specific data set drawn from one brokerage in the spread trading market and are predicated on the assumption that an individual who ceases trading with that brokerage, ceases trading completely. These facts may appear to limit the applicability of the results, but evidence is presented (see Section 3.1.2) to suggest that a spread trader who ceases trading with one broker is likely to cease trading completely. In addition, analysis of the supplementary data yielded similar results to those from the main data set, suggesting that the results have wider applicability. However, further research is needed to confirm that these results hold in other financial markets and over a longer time.

The remainder of the paper proceeds as follows. In Section 2, the literature surrounding the roles that noise traders and more informed traders may play in markets is reviewed.  This literature is employed to motivate the hypotheses, which are designed to shed light on which type of trader is most likely to cease trading.  In Section 3, the data set and the survival-analysis methodology employed to test the hypotheses are described. In Section 4, the results are reported and discussed. Conclusions are drawn in Section 5.

Section snippets

Hypotheses

Employing earlier theoretical and empirical research, Lo (2004, 2005) developed a modified version of the EMH (the AMH), based on the view that, like natural ecological systems, financial markets follow an evolutionary process.  The AMH assumes that the behaviour of different groups of traders, distinguished by their behavioural characteristics, dictates market prices and the availability of resources (e.g., profits) and that traders who are least likely to drive prices to efficient levels

Data, variables and methodology

In this section, the nature of spread trading data is outlined, details of the specific data sets analysed are provided, and the advantages of using these data for testing the hypotheses are discussed. Second, details of the independent and control variables employed in the study are outlined. Third, the Cox Proportional Hazard Model (CPH), which was used to determine to what extent a trader's decision to cease trading is impacted by their profitability, trading ill-discipline and changing

Descriptive statistics

Descriptive statistics of the data used in the main analysis are displayed in Table 2. These relate to demographic details of the traders (e.g., age and savings) and the nature of their trading activity (e.g., staking levels, trading frequency per day, Sharpe ratios achieved). Only 25% of spread traders in the data set achieved positive average returns per trade, a similar proportion to that of profitable day traders in traditional financial markets (Barber, Lee, Liu & Odean, 2005). Whilst 61%

Conclusion

This paper tests the voracity of a key assumption of the AMH, that the dynamics of competition and natural selection will drive ill-disciplined, unprofitable traders from the market. The results indicate that such traders are not necessarily those most likely to cease trading.  However, the results conform with some of the evolutionary processes that underpin the AMH, with populations of traders with different characteristics rising and falling at different times. However, the results do not

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